By Major W. Cox
Last spring, President Clinton announced the One America Initiative and named a commission to begin a national conversation on race. At the time, Mr. Clinton’s critics viewed the idea cynically.
The commission has done very little to date, but the concept caught fire and activated many other Americans to talk about solving our race difficulties. During the last two months, there have been several national conferences addressing race relations, including a White House Teleconference on Hate Crimes.
Since the president’s California speech, more and more white people are getting involved in doing anti-racist work. This is an exciting trend, because it will take all of us to abolish the social structures supporting racism.
[The University of Kentucky, conducted a Conference, "Race and Whiteness" this past week at Lexington, Ky. On February 6-7, 1998, Pamona College; Claremont, California will hold a conference, "Outing Whiteness: Interrogating Re-presentations of Race and Racism." Even the Canadians were talking about race at an October conference, "Making History, Constructing Race: Situating "Race" in Time, Space and Theory" in Victoria, BC, Canada.]
On November 7-8, 1997, the Second National Conference on Whiteness, "Exploring Whiteness to End Racism," took place in Cambridge, Massachusetts on the campus of the Women’s Theological Center. My wife, Margaret, and I attended this conference along with more than three hundred others from throughout the United States.
Within the space constraints of this column, I want to briefly comment on the content of a few of the 22 conference-workshops.
In the session titled, "Mobilizing Middle Class Whites For Social Justice," conferees discussed how to involved middle class whites in the fight against racism, by pointing out how much it benefits them.
The "Becoming Multi-Racial" workshop facilitated a discussion on what it takes for a predominantly white organization to change its image and embrace diversity.
In "Exploring White Culture: The Dream and the Reality," participants discussed professed and actual values of white culture and the extent to which their own socialization reflected these dominant values.
"Young Anti-Racist Activists Speak Out About Whiteness" This work shop provided an opportunity for participants who were under thirty years of age (less than 20 percent of the participants) to dialogue with others.
"The Mentality That Bathes Us All: An Applied Look" was an interactive workshop to identify the habitual way of thinking that contributes to maintaining the "leftovers" from historically racist structures.
At one of the workshops Margaret and I attended, "The New Abolitionist Society," Harvard Professor Noel Ignatiev, author of How the Irish Became white, along with Mary Foulke, Protestant Chaplain at Wellesley College, led the discussions. Participants discussed the theory and practice of today’s abolitionism. The historical linking of modern abolitionism to the first abolitionists provided an important academic understanding of theories about race, white supremacy, and whiteness with an activist orientation. This was a strategy-sharing session about how to abolish whiteness as a social category by working to improve society for everyone.
Our workshop group discussed ways to respond to the government’s request for racial data on the 2000 Census, in light of recent changes in the official race-categories. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) changed Policy Directive Number 15, which mandates the racial categories used for Census data. This change allows Americans to check-off more than one racial category.
As might be expected, most individuals in this group opposed the fact that government continues to segregate American society into racial groups. More than anything else, I believe, as many of the other workshop participants, these government racial classifications provide currency for modern racism. Modern racism: defined as subtle, unintentional, unconscious actions that continue to perpetuate the racism practiced by many well-intentioned white people.
I believe very strongly, that if the government stopped laminating U.S. citizens with official race categories, most of the American people will move beyond race and the racist values these classifications insinuate.
I left this conference feeling good about America, visualizing a time when we will move beyond race and become ONE American people. The three hundred Americans attending this conference manifested that vision.
_________________________________
Originally Published: 19 November 1997, Montgomery Advertiser
© Copyright
- 1992-2004 - Major W. Cox and Montgomery Advertiser.
Read our copyright notice.
Home | Directory of Columns | Search | More About Major Cox | Related Links